


A Good Man

by thedevilchicken



Category: Genghis Khan - Miike Snow (Music Video)
Genre: Backstory, Developing Relationship, First Meetings, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Spies & Secret Agents, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:07:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21833554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Tom tells him he's not like his father. Tomorrow, he'll find out.
Relationships: Gold Nose Villain/Secret Agent (Genghis Khan - Miike Snow)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 79
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Good Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xpityx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/gifts).



Tom drinks a martini in bed every night before they go to sleep. 

It's usually just one, unless Sasha's had a glass of the overpriced French brandy that his father used to like and then maybe it'll be two or three, or else they'll open a bottle of wine. The latter is usually a joint effort because their corkscrew is so utterly ineffectual and they keep meaning to replace it but neither of them ever seems to find the time, then the two of them sit side by side on the living room sofa after the kids have gone to bed or in Sasha's study, his computer cursor flashing white on black and the safe ajar because he's interested to see if anything will ever tempt him. He trusts him, but that was a decision he made with costs carefully weighed against benefits. It's been a long time since he trusted anyone implicitly, and he's told himself he won't make that mistake again. 

It's usually just one martini, unless Sasha's had brandy and then maybe it'll be two or three, or else a bottle of wine. It's never enough to get him drunk, though, because Sasha knows Tom hates getting drunk. Honestly, he thinks he's seen him drugged more often than he's seen him drunk, though the liberal application of lab-concocted chemicals in order to extract a secret agent's secrets doesn't exactly count as a recreational use. Still, Sasha knows Tom's aversion to inebriation is less about the feeling at the time or the hangover that follows than it is about his line of work. He won't call it _former_ because, he thinks: once a spy, always a spy. Tom will never get out of the habit, not really. He can pretend he doesn't know that, if he has to, but he knows.

It's usually just one glass, with an olive in it that he never actually eats but apparently it's an integral part of the experience despite that fact. Every night, Sasha watches Tom fish one out of the jar with a cocktail stick and drop it into the glass with a satisfying splish before he'll even take a sip. Once or twice or somewhat embarrassingly more often than that, one of them has had to get dressed again and jog down the street to the corner shop to pick up a new jar because somehow they'd missed olives off the shopping list - Sasha doesn't believe that for a second, of course, because he's the one who makes the list - and Tom can't have his nightly martini without it. Sasha thinks it's utter nonsense but it makes him smile anyway, even if he's half convinced it's a ploy to get one of them out of the house so that Tom can talk to his handlers back in London. Still, he's long since decided he doesn't really care if that's the case; if he cared, he supposes he'd've killed him. He wouldn't've been the first, and he's had a plethora of opportunities.

Tom has foibles, like martinis in bed and polishing his glasses on his cuff before he puts them on even when the lenses are completely spotless, and how he has to fold his newspaper just the right way before he can settle down to read it or he won't be able to read at all. Sasha's found he can live with all of Tom's foibles quite cordially. He's been living with them for the past fourteen months because he's been living with Tom for the past fourteen months, sharing a house, sharing a bed, sharing a kitchen table in the house his father would have hated but that he's unlikely to give up; they live like normal people because that was always an important part of life there, relative equality if not outright communism. They're used to each other now, though there's still that thrill when he thinks of it sometimes. It's easy. They're happy. Fifteen months ago, Sasha wasn't completely sure he knew what happy was.

He knows Tom better now than he ever did, he thinks, and Tom clearly thinks he knows him in return. Tom tells him sometimes that he's a good man really, underneath it all, underneath the Aleksandrov reputation, and Sasha's been telling him he's wrong. Tom just smiles, so Sasha smiles, and that's usually the end of it. 

Tom tells him he's a good man, and Sasha disagrees. Tomorrow, though, they'll finally find out who's right. 

\---

The first time they met, Sasha was twenty-two years old. 

He'd celebrated his birthday three days earlier, according to his by then time-honoured tradition: he'd attended formal hall, got gravy on his gown and had a semi-serious two-hour conversation about the plays of Sophocles with a professor of Greek Literature despite his utter lack of knowledge on the subject before retiring to his room across the quad. His life there in Oxford wasn't exactly full of thrills but it suited him well enough, he thought. He liked it. It was everything that his life of boys' boarding schools with draughty corridors and classrooms full of chalk dust had prepared him for, and he'd never expected anything different. More to the point, he'd never wanted anything different. With his mother dead and his father wholly absent, he'd been left to schools and teachers all his life. 

He's not quite sure now if it was the bookshop or the library where they met for the first time, but he's sure that it was one or the other; it turned out that James had a flat nearby, over a small shop that sold rare books, so maybe that was it. James was a second year PhD student in Classics doing something about sexual love in Graeco-Roman poetry that made Sasha's chest tighten when he first overheard him discussing it, from the shelf where he was perusing Plato on the professor's recommendation - so it probably the bookshop or else the librarians would have swooped in promptly to shush the conversation into silence. But mostly what he remembers is the look James gave him afterwards, when walked up and introduced himself. 

"James Knightley," he said, and he extended a hand that Sasha shook, albeit while frowning bemusedly down at it. "You looked interested." James raised his brows. "In the topic. You looked interested in it. Tell me, do you know much about Eros?"

"I know a lot more about nuclear fission," Sasha mumbled in response. James laughed. He asked him if he'd like to get some lunch and have a chat and forty minutes later he was explaining ancient Greek perspectives on sexual activity between males like that kind of thing was commonplace in conversation between two people who'd just met. Everything he said was littered with Greek terms and was surprisingly graphic, over a couple of parcels of fish and chips at his kitchen table there above the bookshop. Sasha had been meaning to go to a seminar after picking up his Plato. When he looked at his watch as they finished their fish, he knew he wasn't going to make it unless he bolted from the door and ran like the wind; he probably could have panted his way to a seat at the back, but he didn't leave.

"I really don't understand a word you're talking about," he said instead. "I didn't learn a lot of Greek at school. Just the basics, you know. No _Eros_."

"I could show you," James said, smiling at him broadly, and it wasn't until there were pages of plates of Greek vases and a translation of some kind of treatise on sexual relations spread out all over the table amongst the stray chips that Sasha realised he'd wanted him to _show_ him, not just show him. He told himself it didn't mean anything, because he'd had that kind of stray thought before and just shuffled it aside to go back to his physics. He told himself it wasn't important, then he told himself how nice it was to have made a friend. 

They saw each other often over the months that followed. Sometimes Sasha fell asleep on James's sofa and woke up in the morning with his shoes off and a blanket tucked around him that he was positive hadn't been there before. Sometimes they nodded off in college, in Sasha's room with James snoring with his head back in the armchair or, once or twice, tucked up side by side on Sasha's rather narrow bed. He remembers waking in the morning with James's face in the back of his already receding hair, and James's arm around his waist, and his mind began to wander as he lay there. He'd seen James shirtless once when they'd come in from the midst of a sudden, near-apocalyptic thunderstorm, and he'd seen him pull off the rest of his clothes on the way to the bedroom to dredge up a couple of towels for them to use, so it was almost simple to extrapolate the rest. Once he had, lying there awkwardly as James slept on, he wished he hadn't. He had to remove himself to the nearest bathroom to relieve himself of his shameful erection, and the fact of what he'd done made him blush every time he saw him for at least a week or more. He tried not to do it again, but he did.

And then, one night, on the way back to college from the library, two men tried to attack him. He supposed they managed it, really, more or less, except James came barrelling toward him; after a brief scuffle, during which one of Sasha's attackers virtually flung him down against the ground, they made off with his wallet and his bloody library book. James shouted after them, some kind of threat that Sasha wasn't completely sure he wanted to understand, then he took him inside and up to his room with Sasha's arm slung loosely around his shoulders and his own arm wrapped around Sasha's waist. He might have been able to walk unaided, and perhaps he would have tried to under normal circumstances, but his thoughts had been roundly scrambled by his encounter with the flagstones. Besides, he was positive that this was the second closest that they'd ever been to one another, and it didn't involve one or both of them being quite firmly asleep.

Sasha sat down heavily on the sofa once they were inside and James sat down on the coffee table there in front of him, the rickety old tea-stained thing that Sasha hadn't realised could take a man's weight without it resulting in catastrophic physical collapse. James was too close to him, resting his hands on Sasha's knees, making him uneasy because his head hurt and he didn't quite understand why James's hands were on him. And in the three or four months that they'd known each other, James had never looked at him so intently. He'd never made his heart hammer like that, or maybe that was just the loss of his library book.

"You don't have to stay, you know," Sasha told him. "Really. I'll be fine."

"You might have a concussion."

"I don't feel like I have."

"Have you had one before?"

Sasha frowned. "Well, no."

"Then there you are." James smiled faintly. He gave Sasha's knees a not terribly comforting pat. "I'm glad you think you'll be fine," he said, "but how do you imagine I'd forgive myself if I left you alone and it turned out you _weren't_ fine?"

It didn't seem very much like James actually expected an answer to that, so Sasha didn't give him one. He just sat there, leaning back heavily against the back of the worn old settee, staring at James's hands that were still on his knees as everything else seemed to spin around slowly. James was too close but when he moved, when he stood up from the coffee table with a rather perilous creak, when he moved his hands from his knees at last, he actually just got closer; he planted one knee on the sofa cushion to either side of Sasha's thighs and he sat himself down there, straddling his lap. He took Sasha's face in his hands and rested his forehead lightly against his. Sasha's pulse raced. His face felt hot. He had no idea what to do, or if indeed he should do anything, so he did nothing at all. 

"I need to know everything's alright," James said, and then his stubbly jaw brushed Sasha's smooth-shaved cheek and his mouth dropped to the side of Sasha's neck. "Is everything alright?" he asked, his lips moving against his skin, and Sasha nodded tightly. James shifted just a fraction, brushed his lips against Sasha's cheek, and maybe it was something he could have passed off as accidental. But then, just for a moment, just for a flash, James's eyes met his. And then, James kissed him. James's mouth pressed to his, quite softly and quite slowly. 

"Is everything alright, Sasha?" James asked. His voice was low and strained, like Sasha felt. 

Sasha nodded again, though the motion was underwhelmingly small. He swallowed. "Yes," he said. His voice felt thick and not quite right. "Yes, James, everything's alright."

"Are you sure about that?"

One of James's hands went down, over Sasha's chest, past the buckle of his belt and down between his legs. James pressed there with the flat of his palm, slowly and deliberately, and Sasha made a noise of surprise in the back of his throat - not a very flattering one, he thought, a bit like a startled duck. James chuckled against the crook of his neck, his hand rubbing slowly, and Sasha could feel the beginnings of an erection that he would have liked to have willed away, if he'd had any will at all. He hadn't, so he stiffened quickly.

"Alright?" James asked, his mouth against the hinge of Sasha's jaw, his breath on his skin almost tickling. 

Sasha nodded. "Alright, James," he said, though he could count at least fifteen reasons why it most certainly was not alright. The problem was, James was the single most interesting person that he'd ever met. The problem was, he was fairly sure he'd been in love with him since two o'clock in the afternoon they'd met. And all the things that James had said about his research, all the things he'd mentioned oh-so-casually, all the sex acts on photographs vases and in obscene graffiti, poems it tested his Latin and Greek to read...Sasha had wanted those things, with him, for months. He'd tried hard not to. He'd failed.

Sasha kissed him. Before he could stop himself, he kissed him. He pressed his mouth to his and he let his hands skim his waist over his neatly tucked shirt and he kissed him as his head swam and his heart thumped hard in his chest. He'd never have dared before. Four seconds later, he wished he hadn't. 

"Oh God," James said, and he pulled back suddenly, reeling away. His hands went into his hair and pulled as Sasha's stomach sank and lurched. "Oh God, Sasha. I can't do this." 

"You don't have to," Sasha pointed out, frowning, as he pulled himself up to his feet. And perhaps he _did_ have a concussion because the room seemed to tilt rather sickly to one side as he did so. "You don't have to. I didn't ask you to. I'm sorry. It's my fault. I'm not feeling like myself. Can we just stop and pretend that nothing ever happened?" 

James's mouth twisted bitterly. He shook his head. 

"It's not you," he said. "It's absolutely not you." He sighed. He chuckled. "God, it's not even remotely you. It's me. It's my fault entirely." He tapped his own chest for emphasis, then he took a breath and pulled himself up very straight and very tall, his hands on his hips. It was like he was trying to convince himself he was a different person entirely, or at least convince Sasha he was. 

"Look, I work for British intelligence," he said.

Sasha frowned at him. He felt unsteady. "I don't understand," he replied.

"I know. And I'm sorry."

"What do you mean, _British intelligence_?"

"I mean, I work for MI-6."

"I didn't think MI-6 was interested in Classics."

"They're admittedly more interested in you."

"But what on earth would MI-6 want with me?"

"Your father." 

"My father? I don't follow. He's a businessman. What is he supposed to have done?"

"He's a _Lithian_ businessman," James explained. 

"He's Russian. He lives in Moscow."

"He lives in Lithenberg, Sasha. He's Aleksandr Aleksandrov. You've been lied to for a very long time."

Sasha sat back down perhaps too quickly. He closed his eyes. It didn't help, not even remotely, so he opened them again.

"Even were that true, what does British intelligence want from me?"

"We think he'll try to recruit you once you've finished your doctoral work."

"And?"

"Well, we rather hoped you'd let him." 

"You mean you wanted me to spy for you."

"Yes," James said. "That was the general idea."

Sasha sighed. "Am I supposed to fall over myself to say I'll do it?" he asked. " _Yes, James, of course, James, I'll do anything, please just don't leave_?"

James came toward him. James knelt down in front of him, between him and the rickety old coffee table, and he put his hands on his knees. "No, that's not it at all. I was--"

"Get out." 

"Sasha, I didn't--"

" _Get out_."

He thought about hitting him. He thought maybe the fact that he didn't hit him meant he wasn't a violent person. He was very, very wrong. 

He was still hard when James left. He dealt with it on his knees in the washroom down the corridor, one hand around his cock and one hand clamped over his mouth because he thought he might be violently sick. When he came, he realised James probably wasn't even his real name. Then he _was_ sick. 

He couldn't help but wonder if it had all been planned, from the moment they'd met to the fight by the library; perhaps the men who'd hit him had been spies, too. 

When the offer came from Aleksandr Aleksandrov's company a few months later, he turned down a prestigious research position there in Oxford and accepted that instead. He went to meet his father, and take his place.

He supposed he'd never see James again. But without him, he might never have left England. 

\---

They didn't meet again until almost eleven years later. 

Sasha was established within the company by then. He'd gone in as a low-level scientist at first, one of the numerous expendable white coats in the numerous Lithian labs, so he could start to learn the business from the ground up and decide if he actually wanted to stay. They had so many exciting projects that he hadn't been entirely sure where to start, though: there was one lab researching synthetic skin and one made improvements to surgical instruments, one designed computers, one worked with lasers, one examined renewable energy sources. He stuck with the computers, though mostly because the code they used felt about as far away from Graeco-Roman poetry as he could possibly run to.

Years passed, and they passed remarkably quickly. He'd taken over the computer lab in his third year and overall control of research and development in seven, much to his father's pleasure, though frankly he knew he didn't do it for familial approval. He did it for the challenge it presented, for the interest that he had in the work they did, for all the reasons he'd tried to throw himself into his studies when he'd first stumbled across James Knightley and when he'd said his unceremonious goodbye. 

As head of his department, he skimmed the names and photographs of every prospective new employee; for years they were almost entirely uneventful, but then one day he came across a familiar face with an unfamiliar name attached to it. James Knightley had become Dr. Robert Fenchurch, a British chemist rather than a classicist, and he sat and he stared and he frowned and he cried until his assistant grew somewhat alarmed by his behaviour. He knew he should have told his father, gone straight from his own office to their CEO's, except he knew exactly what his father would have done. He should have vetoed the appointment at the very least and had the personnel office deliver the unhappy news to Dr. Fenchurch before he had the chance to arrive on Lithian soil. He didn't do that. He'd almost managed to persuade himself over the years that James Knightley must be dead - the way he understood it, spies had a tendency toward a rather short shelf life. Honestly, he was surprised he'd ever seen him again.

Perhaps the British had thought they could still get to him. Perhaps they'd thought a sudden reappearance would unsettle him into changing sides, or perhaps they'd assumed their paths wouldn't cross at all and his presence there where Sasha was was just a simple coincidence - perhaps James himself had assumed he wouldn't know that it was him, or planned to keep out of his way. He doesn't really believe that, though; he didn't then and he doesn't now, even if he's never asked the question. Or perhaps his lack of belief is the reason that he hasn't asked. In any case, he told himself he just wanted to observe their operation, but he knows the truth is simpler: he just wanted to see him again. 

James, Robert, the nameless agent of British intelligence, was kept solidly and quietly in his place for the first three weeks of his employment. Sasha had his best men watch him and had them report to him three times each and every day so he could maintain a sensible distance personally. They found Fenchurch had joined another preexisting agent already in their midst, a slightly older one, less debonair but quite thoroughly entrenched. Sasha followed the other man himself and insinuated himself into the work he did. The next thing he knew, his face was splashed, and then it burned, and then he screamed. When he woke in the clinic several days later, he learned what had splashed him was one of their experimental acids. He was lucky he'd had his goggles on or he might have lost both eyes instead of what he had, they said, or at the very least lost sight in them. 

And by the time he'd woken up, both agents had left Lithia. The only saving grace was the acid that had eaten into Sasha's face had also nibbled at their stolen microfiche. 

He found out who he was after that, and it was neither Robert Fenchurch nor James Knightley. He found out everything he could about him, using the finest investigators his family's money could employ. He was Thomas DeWitt, they said, Tom to his friends, only child, orphaned age eight and packed off to boarding school after boarding school by a distant great-aunt who had never shown much interest. He spoke four languages, not including the Greek and Latin whose use Sasha was already acquainted with so intimately, and had been a British intelligence officer - codenamed Agent 9 - since the age of twenty-one. He was three years older than Sasha was, with intellect that likely matched his own. He was the best of the best; the only failures they could note against his name were the plans that had been stored on that microfiche and one other, much earlier, no specifics attached. Sasha wondered if that was him, or if he'd been considered some kind of success in waiting. He wondered how many others there'd been. He wondered if he'd always been so damn transparent that MI-6 could tell precisely how to get to him.

Over the years that followed, he saw him every now and then. He saw him at an energy conference in Switzerland, heading out of the talks to ski with a very pretty blonde girl. He saw him at a ball at the Russian embassy in London, on the arm of a beautiful older woman fairly dripping in diamonds that didn't make it out of there still attached to her. He saw him across the room at a Monte Carlo casino, at a technology fair in Massachusetts, in a racing suit at Le Mans. They never spoke, not that Sasha knew what he would say to him; he rehearsed it sometimes, in his head in bed at night with the wife his father had found for him from who knew where because he'd never asked, or on his morning run, or in the shower before work. He wondered if Thomas DeWitt ever wondered if he'd turn him in, wondered if he knew he knew his name, wondered if he thought about him at all. He thought about doing it, turning him in, turning him over, selling his details to the parties he'd aggrieved the most. He thought maybe the fact he didn't made him a good friend, or a loyal friend, but he knows that they were never friends. 

And then, one day, there he was back in Lithia. Sasha truly hadn't believed he'd dare come back again, but there he was: at the company's anniversary gala, with a stunning brunette on his arm. Sasha thought he might let him leave. He thought he might get through the night without throwing up his expensive dinner all over his expensive suit. But then there they were, face to face, shaking hands. There they were, James's skin on his for the first time in twenty years. _Tom's_ skin. James didn't exist.

"Richard Cavendish," Tom said. "I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Aleksandrov. I'm a great admirer of your work."

Sasha gripped Tom's hand more tightly, involuntarily, until it hurt him to do it so it must have hurt Tom, too. He'd thought he could stomach it and carry on with equanimity, but in that moment he understood just how acutely he'd been in error. 

"Excuse me," he replied. He worked his jaw like there was more he might say, all those things he's practiced saying while his wife slept next to him, while their children slept in the next room. He let go. He took a breath. "Excuse me," he said again, more steadily though he didn't feel steady, and then he turned and walked away. But when the guards caught Agent 9 breaking into the lab, Sasha finally had no choice; though his heart wasn't in it, he sent him to the cells. 

Tom DeWitt was not the first spy to find himself in that cell, and it was clean, almost too clean, almost clinical like an operating theatre once the blood's been cleaned away and from the look on Tom's face, Sasha knew he knew. They'd had MI-6 men in there before, KGB, CIA, the French, maybe a Stasi or two. It wasn't a place that spies wanted to be. That place was a reason that spies wanted to avoid his country. It was also one of the reasons their spymasters kept sending them back; if they had nothing to hide, they supposed, there would be no need for retaliation. Sasha couldn't say that made much sense to him, but his head had always been for science. 

He had them take off Tom's jacket and sweep him for listening devices. There were none, but Sasha supposed he'd always been cocky. He supposed most spies had to be, to some greater or lesser extent. 

"Are you going to kill me, Sasha?" Tom asked him, under the harsh white lights. He looked the same as always, in his dinner suit, fresh from the gala. Perhaps a little older, but he couldn't say he wasn't also older himself. He'd been so young when they'd met. Impossibly young, and impossibly naive. He supposed he had Tom DeWitt to thank for finishing his education.

"Eventually," Sasha replied. "Eventually, I suppose." 

"But not tonight?"

"Not tonight. We're in the middle of a party, James. My wife will be wondering where I am."

Then he had him drenched in freezing water and left there alone in the dark. He went back to the party, and he smiled underneath his ugly gold prosthetic while he danced with his very pretty wife.

In the morning, when he went inside the cell, Tom was shivering. He knew what he was doing when he went across the room to him, he told himself. He knew what he was doing when he stepped up close against him and let Tom's freezing skin leech his body heat. For the first few minutes, that only made him shiver harder, just like he'd known it would. 

"Aren't you going to ask me questions?" Tom asked, through chattering teeth. 

"What would you like me to ask?" he replied. 

"You could ask who sent me." 

"Why? I know MI-6 sent you." 

"You could ask me why."

"I don't really care why." And the beauty of it was that he really didn't care. All he cared about was the fact that he was there, and that they were no longer pretending. No vague acquaintances, no blank smiles, no pretense they'd never met before when they glanced across rooms at strings of nameless and otherwise dull events, just Agent 9 and the son of the most dangerous of Lithian oligarchs. Then he pressed a kiss against his forehead, and then he left the room.

On the third day, he had the guards bring in heat lamps and they made him so uncomfortably warm - by design, of course - that he almost passed out. On the fourth day, he let the guards beat him black and blue. On the fifth, he just let him hang from his wrists from the chains at the wall as he read aloud from the report he was almost certain he'd come there to steal. Frankly, he wasn't sure he wouldn't just have handed it to him if he'd asked him. He was glad he hadn't. He wished desperately that he had. 

On the sixth day, he went in bright and early with a razor and a towel and a bowl of hot, clean water on a shiny steel trolley, with a tray with a needle lying on it. 

"Will I need the sedative or will you sit still?" he asked. 

"You do know it wasn't me that did that to you?" Tom said, as if that was a reply to his question in some perverse way, and his watch clinked against the cuff at his wrist like he'd have brought his hand up to touch Sasha's face if only he could have. Sadie has never been able to touch his scars, though she's never known him without them. She's always told him to put the prosthetic back on, and then turned away until he does. Sasha scowled. He left the tray there. He's really only surprised he didn't try to escape when he was gone. 

On the seventh day, he gave him the sedative, and he shaved his face and washed him while he couldn't move, careful of his bruises though logically he knew he was unconscious. He could have asked him questions; he could have injected him with C-84-99, an incredibly potent truth serum cooked up by one of their more covert laboratories, but the issue was that C-84-99 is fatal in 14% of cases and results in serious brain injury in a further 12%. Other side-effects include blindness, deafness, partial or complete paralysis...and he wanted him alive. Honestly, he didn't even want him to suffer; he just knew he _should_ want him to, and that a good interrogation should take days, or sometimes weeks. 

On the eighth day, he escaped, but they caught him again disappointingly quickly; he remembers having him locked to the bench in the lab, and what he thought that he might do after. He remembers not doing it. Instead, he asked him, "Why did they choose you?" 

"Well, they thought that I could make you fall in love with me," Tom said, and before they could strap down his right hand he trailed his fingertips over Sasha's ridiculous gold mask. "Did I?"

He let him go rather than answer. The last thing he expected was that he'd come back.

\---

Tom drinks a martini in bed every night. That's just one of the things Sasha knows about him now he knows _him_ and not James Knightley, Robert Fenchurch, Richard Cavendish. He plays golf and he's rather bemusingly good at it. He speaks Lithian with an English accent and French with a German one. And he really does know a lot about Graeco-Roman poetry. He knows a lot about the sentiments behind it. He knows so much about the physical act, too; since the divorce, he's proved that frequently. In that respect, he's been worth the wait.

Occasionally, he's not sure if what they have is just a honey trap, because that's how it began. He's not sure why they chose Tom for the job, except maybe they spied him buying his one and only dirty magazine or someone he had a bit of a changing room fumble with at boarding school told tales. He's not sure if all of this is just an op to Tom. Sometimes, he thinks he'd have been better off in Oxford, teaching, eating dinner with the students, no scars, no vicious oligarch father, no Lithia, no plans. He almost wishes that he'd never told him, that he'd fucked him, made him love him, made him go to work for him; he almost wishes he hadn't said a word, and he wonders why he did. He hasn't always been a villain. He wonders if Tom knows he made him what he is by telling him what he was. 

Six weeks ago, his father died, and Sasha inherited the company. He more or less inherited the country, given Lithia's rather limited economy outside their company's rather vast industrial complex - outside, it's just goats and rocks and a bitter cold wind off the sea. Six weeks ago, his father died, and he's managed to arrange it so no one asks how. 

And Tom tells him he's a good man. He tells him he's not like his father. He'd like to believe him, but he's not sure he does. 

Tomorrow, he has a decision to make: press the button and watch on his screens as the world falls down for his own profit, or take the programme apart. Tomorrow, the war begins, or else it doesn't. 

Tom tells him he's a good man. Tomorrow, he'll find out.


End file.
